Affinities Of Buddhism And Christianity

by James Freeman Clarke

It has long been known that many analogies exist between Buddhism
and Christianity. The ceremonies, ritual, and rites of the Buddhists
strikingly resemble those of the Roman Catholic Church. The Buddhist
priests are monks. They take the same three vows of poverty, chastity,
and obedience which are binding on those of the Roman Church. They
are mendicants, like the mendicant orders of St. Francis and St.
Dominic.

They are tonsured; use strings of beads, like the rosary, with
which to count their prayers; have incense and candles in their
worship; use fasts, processions, litanies, and holy water. They
have something akin to the adoration of saints; repeat prayers in
an unknown tongue; have a chanted psalmody with a double choir;
and suspend the censer from five chains. In China, some Buddhists
worship the image of a virgin, called the Queen of Heaven, having
an infant in her arms, and holding a cross. In Thibet the Grand
Lamas wear a mitre, dalmatica, and cope, and pronounce a benediction
on the laity by extending the right hand over their heads. The Dalai-Lama
resembles the Pope, and is regarded as the head of the Church. The
worship of relics is very ancient among the Buddhists, and so are
pilgrimages to sacred places.

Besides these resemblances in outward ceremonies, more important
ones appear in the inner life and history of the two religions.
Both belong to those systems which derive their character from a
human founder, and not from a national tendency; to the class which
contains the religions of Moses, Zoroaster, Confucius, and Mohammed,
and not to that in which the Brahmanical, Egyptian, Scandinavian,
Greek, and Roman religions are found. Both Buddhism and Christianity
are catholic, and not ethnic; that is, not confined to a single
race or nation, but by their missionary spirit passing beyond these
boundaries, and making converts among many races.

Christianity began among the Jews as a Semitic religion, but,
being rejected by the Jewish nation, established itself among the
Aryan races of Europe. In the same way Buddhism, beginning among
an Aryan people—the Hindoos—was expelled from Hindostan, and established
itself among the Mongol races of Eastern Asia. Besides its resemblances
to the Roman Catholic side of Christendom, Buddhism has still closer
analogies with the Protestant Church. Like Protestantism, it is
a reform, which rejects a hierarchal system and does away with a
priestly caste. Like Protestantism, it has emphasized the purely
humane side of life, and is a religion of humanity rather than of
piety. Both the Christian and Buddhist churches teach a divine incarnation,
and both worship a God-man.

Are these remarkable analogies only casual resemblances, or are
they real affinities? By affinity we here mean genetic relationship.
Are Buddhism and Christianity related as mother and child, one being
derived from the other; or are they related by both being derived
from some common ancestor? Is either derived from the other, as
Christianity from Judaism, or Protestantism from the Papal Church?
That there can be no such affinity as this seems evident from history.
History shows no trace of the contact which would be required for
such influence. If Christianity had taken its customs from Buddhism,
or Buddhism from Christianity, there must have been ample historic
evidence of the fact. But, instead of this, history shows that each
has grown up by its own natural development, and has unfolded its
qualities separately and alone. The law of evolution also teaches
that such great systems do not come from imitation, but as growths
from a primal germ.

Nor does history give the least evidence of a common ancestry
from which both took their common traits. We know that Buddhism
was derived from Brahmanism, and that Christianity was derived from
Judaism. Now, Judaism and Brahmanism have few analogies; they could
not, therefore, have transmitted to their offspring what they did
not themselves possess. If Buddhism and Christianity came from a
common source, that source must have antedated both the Mosaic and
Brahmanical systems. Even then it would be a case of atavism in
which the original type disappeared in the children, to reappear
in the later descendants.

Are, then, these striking resemblances, and others which are
still to be mentioned, only accidental analogies? This does not
necessarily follow; for there is a third alternative. They may be
what are called in science homologies; that is, the same law working
out similar results under the same conditions, though under different
circumstances. The whale lives under different circumstances from
other mammalia; but being a mammal, he has a like osseous structure.
What seems to be a fin, being dissected, turns out to be an arm,
with hand and fingers. There are like homologies in history. Take
the instance of the English and French revolutions. In each case
the legitimate king was tried, condemned, and executed. A republic
followed. The republic gave way before a strong-handed usurper.
Then the original race of kings was restored; but, having learned
nothing and forgotten nothing, they were displaced a second time,
and a constitutional monarch placed on the throne, who, though not
the legitimate king, still belonged to the same race. Here the same
laws of human nature have worked out similar results; for no one
would suggest that France had copied its revolutions from England.
And, in religion, human nature reproduces similar customs and ceremonies
under like conditions. When, for instance, you have a mechanical
system of prayer, in which the number of prayers is of chief importance,
there must be some way of counting them, and so the rosary has been
invented independently in different religions. We have no room to
point out how this law has worked in other instances; but it is
enough to refer to the principle.

Differences

Besides these resemblances between Buddhism and Christianity,
there are also some equally remarkable differences, which should
be noticed.

The first of these is the striking fact that Buddhism has been
unable to recognize the existence of the Infinite Being. It has
been called atheism by the majority of the best authorities. Even
Arthur Lillie, who defends this system from the charge of agnosticism,
says:6
"An agnostic school of Buddhism without doubt exists. It professes
plain atheism, and holds that every mortal, when he escapes from
re-births, and the causation of Karma by the awakenment of the Bodhi
or gnosis, will be annihilated. This Buddhism, by Eugène Burnouf,
Saint-Hilaire, Max Müller, Csoma de Körös, and, I believe, almost
every writer of note, is pronounced the original Buddhism,—the Buddhism
of the South." Almost every writer of note, therefore, who has studied
Buddhism in the Pâli, Singhalese, Chinese, and other languages,
and has had direct access to its original sources, has pronounced
it a system of atheism. But this opinion is opposed to the fact
that Buddhists have everywhere worshiped unseen and superhuman powers,
erected magnificent temples, maintained an elaborate ritual, and
adored Buddha as the supreme ruler of the worlds. How shall we explain
this paradox? All depends on the definition we give to the word
"atheism." If a system is atheistic which sees only the temporal,
and not the eternal; which knows no God as the author, creator,
and ruler of Nature; which ascribes the origin of the universe to
natural causes, to which only the finite is knowable, and the infinite
unknowable—then Buddhism is atheism. But, in that case, much of
the polytheism of the world must be regarded as atheism; for polytheism
has largely worshiped finite gods. The whole race of Olympian deities
were finite beings. Above them ruled the everlasting necessity of
things. But who calls the Greek worshipers atheists? The Buddha,
to most Buddhists, is a finite being, one who has passed through
numerous births, has reached Nirvana, and will one day be superseded
by another Buddha. Yet, for the time, he is the Supreme Being, Ruler
of all the Worlds. He is the object of worship, and really divine,
if in a subordinate sense.

I would not, therefore, call this religion atheism. No religion
which worships superhuman powers can justly be called atheistic
on account of its meagre metaphysics. How many Christians there
are who do not fully realize the infinite and eternal nature of
the Deity! To many He is no more than the Buddha is to his worshipers,—a
supreme being, a mighty ruler, governing all things by his will.
How few see God everywhere in nature, as Jesus saw Him, letting
his sun shine on the evil and good, and sending his rain on the
just and unjust. How few see Him in all of life, so that not a sparrow
dies, or a single hair of the head falls, without the Father. Most
Christians recognize the Deity only as occasionally interfering
by special providences, particular judgments, and the like.

But in Christianity this ignorance of the eternal nature of God
is the exception, while in Buddhism it is the rule. In the reaction
against Brahmanism, the Brahmanic faith in the infinite was lost.
In the fully developed system of the ancient Hindoo religion the
infinite overpowered the finite, the temporal world was regarded
as an illusion, and only the eternal was real. The reaction from
this extreme was so complete as to carry the Buddhists to the exact
opposite. If to the Brahman all the finite visible world was only
maya—illusion, to the Buddhists all the infinite unseen world was
unknowable, and practically nothing.

Perhaps the most original feature of Christianity is the fact
that it has combined in a living synthesis that which in other systems
was divided. Jesus regarded love to God and love to man as identical,—positing
a harmonious whole of time and eternity, piety and humanity, faith
and works,—and thus laid the foundation of a larger system than
either Brahmanism or Buddhism. He did not invent piety, nor discover
humanity. Long before he came the Brahmanic literature had sounded
the deepest depths of spiritual life, and the Buddhist missionaries
had preached universal benevolence to mankind. But the angelic hymn
which foretold the new religion as bringing at once "Glory to God
in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men" indicated
the essence of the faith which was at the same time a heavenly love
and an earthly blessing. This difference of result in the two systems
came probably from the different methods of their authors. With
Jesus life was the source of knowledge; the life was the light of
men. With the Buddha, reflection, meditation, thought was the source
of knowledge. In this, however, he included intuition no less than
reflection. Sakya-muni understood perfectly that a mere intellectual
judgment possessed little motive power; therefore he was not satisfied
till he had obtained an intuitive perception of truth. That alone
gave at once rest and power. But as the pure intellect, even in
its highest act, is unable to grasp the infinite, the Buddha was
an agnostic on this side of his creed by the very success of his
method. Who, by searching, can find out God? The infinite can only
be known by the process of living experience. This was the method
of Jesus, and has been that of his religion. For what is faith but
that receptive state of mind which waits on the Lord to receive
the illumination which it cannot create by its own processes? However
this may be, it is probable that the fatal defect in Buddhism which
has neutralized its generous philanthropy and its noble humanities
has been the absence of the inspiration which comes from the belief
in an eternal world. Man is too great to be satisfied with time
alone, or eternity alone; he needs to live from and for both. Hence,
Buddhism is an arrested religion, while Christianity is progressive.
Christianity has shown the capacity of outgrowing its own defects
and correcting its own mistakes. For example, it has largely outgrown
its habit of persecuting infidels and heretics. No one is now put
to death for heresy. It has also passed out of the stage in which
religion is considered to consist in leaving the world and entering
a monastery. The anchorites of the early centuries are no longer
to be found in Christendom. Even in Catholic countries the purpose
of monastic life is no longer to save the soul by ascetic tortures,
but to attain some practical end. The Protestant Reformation, which
broke the yoke of priestly power and set free the mind of Europe,
was a movement originating in Christianity itself, like other developments
of a similar kind. No such signs of progress exist in the system
of Buddhism. It has lost the missionary ardor of its early years;
it has ceased from creating a vast literature such as grew up in
its younger days; it no longer produces any wonders of architecture.
It even lags behind the active life of the countries where it has
its greatest power.

It is a curious analogy between the two systems that, while neither
the Christ nor the Buddha practiced or taught asceticism, their
followers soon made the essence of religion to consist in some form
of monastic life. Both Jesus and Sakya-muni went about doing good.
Both sent their followers into the world to preach a gospel. Jesus,
after thirty years of a retired life, came among men "eating and
drinking," and associating with "publicans and sinners." Sakya-muni,
after spending some years as an anchorite, deliberately renounced
that mode of religion as unsatisfactory, and associated with all
men, as Jesus afterward did. Within a few centuries after their
death, their followers relapsed into ascetic and monastic practices;
but with this difference, that while in Christendom there has always
been both a regular and a secular clergy, in the Buddhist countries
the whole priesthood live in monasteries. They have no parish priests,
unless as an exception. While in Christian countries the clergy
has become more and more a practical body, in sympathy with the
common life, in Buddhist lands they live apart and exercise little
influence on the civil condition of the people.

Nor must we pass by the important fact that the word Christendom
is synonymous with a progressive civilization, while Buddhism is
everywhere connected with one which is arrested and stationary.
The boundaries of the Christian religion are exactly coextensive
with the advance of science, art, literature; and with the continued
accumulation of knowledge, power, wealth, and the comforts of human
life. According to Kuenen,7
one of the most recent students of these questions, this difference
is due to the principle of hope which exists in Christianity, but
is absent in Buddhism. The one has always believed in a kingdom
of God here and a blessed immortality hereafter. Buddhism has not
this hope; and this, says Kuenen, "is a blank which nothing can
fill." So large a thinker as Albert Réville has expressed his belief
that even the intolerance of Christianity indicated a passionate
love of truth which has created modern science. He says that "if
Europe had not passed through those ages of intolerance, it is doubtful
whether the science of our day would ever have arrived."8
It is only within the boundaries of nations professing the Christian
faith that we must go to-day to learn the latest discoveries in
science, the best works of art, the most flourishing literature.
Only within the same circle of Christian states is there a government
by law, and not by will. Only within these boundaries have the rights
of the individual been secured, while the power of the state has
been increased. Government by law, joined with personal freedom,
is only to be found where the faith exists which teaches that God
not only supports the universal order of natural things, but is
also the friend of the individual soul; and in just that circle
of states in which the doctrine is taught that there is no individual
soul for God to love and no Divine presence in the order of nature,
human life has subsided into apathy, progress has ceased, and it
has been found impossible to construct national unity. Saint-Hilaire
affirms9
that "in politics and legislation the dogma of Buddhism has remained
inferior even to that of Brahmanism," and "has been able to do nothing
to constitute states or to govern them by equitable rules." These
Buddhist nations are really six: Siam, Burma, Nepaul, Thibet, Tartary,
and Ceylon. The activity and social progress in China and Japan
are no exceptions to this rule; for in neither country has Buddhism
any appreciable influence on the character of the people.

To those who deny that the theology of a people influences its
character, it may be instructive to see how exactly the good and
evil influences of Buddhism correspond to the positive and negative
traits of its doctrine. Its merits, says Saint-Hilaire, are its
practical character, its abnegation of vulgar gratifications, its
benevolence, mildness, sentiment of human equality, austerity of
manners, dislike of falsehood, and respect for the family. Its defects
are want of social power, egotistical aims, ignorance of the ideal
good, of the sense of human right and human freedom, skepticism,
incurable despair, contempt of life. All its human qualities correspond
to its doctrinal teaching from the beginning. It has always taught
benevolence, patience, self-denial, charity, and toleration. Its
defects arise inevitably from its negative aim,—to get rid of sorrow
and evil by sinking into apathy, instead of seeking for the triumph
of good and the coming of a reign of God here on the earth.

As regards the Buddha himself, modern students differ widely.
Some, of course, deny his very existence, and reduce him to a solar
myth. M. Emile Senart, as quoted by Oldenberg,10
following the Lalita Vistara as his authority, makes of him a solar
hero, born of the morning cloud, contending by the power of light
with the demons of darkness, rising in triumph to the zenith of
heavenly glory, then passing into the night of Nirvana and disappearing
from the scene.

The difficulty about this solar myth theory is that it proves
too much; it is too powerful a solvent; it would dissolve all history.
How easy it would be, in a few centuries, to turn General Washington
and the American Revolution into a solar myth! Great Britain, a
region of clouds and rain, represents the Kingdom of Darkness; America,
with more sunshine, is the Day. Great Britain, as Darkness, wishes
to devour the Young Day, or dawn of light, which America is about
to diffuse over the earth. But Washington, the solar hero, arrives.
He is from Virginia, that is, born of a virgin. He was born in February,
in the sign of Aquarius and the Fishes,—plainly referring to the
birth of the sun from the ocean. As the sun surveys the earth, so
Washington was said to be a surveyor of many regions. The story
of the fruitless attempts of the Indians to shoot him at Braddock's
defeat is evidently legendary; and, in fact, this battle itself
must be a myth, for how can we suppose two English and French armies
to have crossed the Atlantic, and then gone into a wilderness west
of the mountains, to fight a battle? So easy is it to turn history
into a solar myth.

The character of Sakya-muni must be learned from his religion
and from authentic tradition. In many respects his character and
influence resembled that of Jesus. He opposed priestly assumptions,
taught the equality and brotherhood of man, sent out disciples to
teach his doctrine, was a reformer who relied on the power of truth
and love. Many of his reported sayings resemble those of Jesus.
He was opposed by the Brahmans as Jesus by the Pharisees. He compared
the Brahmans who followed their traditions to a chain of blind men,
who move on, not seeing where they go.11
Like Jesus, he taught that mercy was better than sacrifices. Like
Jesus, he taught orally, and left no writing. Jesus did not teach
in Hebrew, but in the Aramaic, which was the popular dialect, and
so the Buddha did not speak to the people in Sanskrit, but in their
own tongue, which was Pâli. Like Jesus, he seems to have instructed
his hearers by parables or stories. He was one of the greatest reformers
the world has ever seen; and his influence, after that of the Christ,
has probably exceeded that of any one who ever lived.

But, beside such real resemblances between these two masters,
we are told of others still more striking, which would certainly
be hard to explain unless one of the systems had borrowed from the
other. These are said to be the preëxistence of Buddha in heaven;
his birth of a virgin; salutation by angels; presentation in the
temple; baptism by fire and water; dispute with the doctors; temptation
in the wilderness; transfiguration; descent into hell; ascension
into heaven.12
If these legends could be traced back to the time before Christ,
then it might be argued that the Gospels have borrowed from Buddhism.
Such, however, is not the fact. These stories are taken from the
Lalita Vistara, which, according to Rhys Davids,13
was probably composed between six hundred and a thousand years after
the time of Buddha, by some Buddhist poet in Nepaul. Rhys Davids,
one of our best authorities, says of this poem: "As evidence of
what early Buddhism actually was, it is of about the same value
as some mediæval poem would be of the real facts of the gospel history."13
M. Ernest de Bunsen, in his work on the "Angel Messiah," has given
a very exhaustive statement, says Mr. Davids, of all the possible
channels through which Christians can be supposed to have borrowed
from the Buddhists. But Mr. Davids's conclusion is that he finds
no evidence of any such communications of ideas from the East to
the West.14
The difference between the wild stories of the Lalita Vistara and
the sober narratives of the Gospels is quite apparent. Another writer,
Professor Seydel,15
thinks, after a full and careful examination, that only five facts
in the Gospels may have been borrowed from Buddhism. These are:
(1) The fast of Jesus before his work; (2) The question in regard
to the blind man—"Who did sin, this man, or his parents"? (3) The
preëxistence of Christ; (4) The presentation in the Temple; (5)
Nathanael sitting under a fig-tree, compared with Buddha under a
Bo-tree. But Kuenen has examined these parallels, and considers
them merely accidental coincidences. And, in truth, it is very hard
to conceive of one religion borrowing its facts or legends from
another, if that other stands in no historic relation to it. That
Buddhism should have taken much from Brahmanism is natural; for
Brahmanism was its mother. That Christianity should have borrowed
many of its methods from Judaism is equally natural; for Judaism
was its cradle. Modern travelers in Burma and Tartary have found
that the Buddhists hold a kind of camp-meeting in the open air,
where they pray and sing. Suppose that some critic, noticing this,
should assert that, when Wesley and his followers established similar
customs, they must have borrowed them from the Buddhists. The absurdity
would be evident. New religions grow, they are not imitations.

It has been thought, however, that Christianity was derived from
the Essenes, because of certain resemblances, and it is argued that
the Essenes must have obtained their monastic habits from the Therapeutæ
in Egypt, and that the Therapeutæ received them from the Buddhists,
because they could not have found them elsewhere. This theory, however,
has been dismissed from the scene by the young German scholar,16
who has proved that the essay on the Therapeutæ ascribed to Philo
was really written by a Christian anchorite in the third or fourth
century.

The result, then, of our investigation, is this: There is no
probability that the analogies between Christianity and Buddhism
have been derived the one from the other. They have come from the
common and universal needs and nature of man, which repeat themselves
again and again in like positions and like circumstances. That Jesus
and Buddha should both have retired into the wilderness before undertaking
their great work is probable, for it has been the habit of other
reformers to let a period of meditation precede their coming before
the world. That both should have been tempted to renounce their
enterprise is also in accordance with human nature. That, in after
times, the simple narratives should be overlaid with additions,
and a whole mass of supernatural wonders added,—as we find in the
Apocryphal Gospels and the Lalita Vistara,—is also in accordance
with the working of the human mind.

Laying aside all such unsatisfactory resemblances, we must regard
the Buddha as having been one of the noblest of men, and one whom
Jesus would have readily welcomed as a fellow worker and a friend.
He opposed a dominant priesthood, maintained the equal religious
rights of all mankind, overthrew caste, encouraged woman to take
her place as man's equal, forbade all bloody sacrifices, and preached
a religion of peace and good will, seeking to triumph only in the
fair conflict of reason with reason. If he was defective in the
loftiest instincts of the soul; if he knew nothing of the infinite
and eternal; if he saw nothing permanent in the soul of man; if
his highest purpose was negative,—to escape from pain, sorrow, anxiety,
toil,—let us still be grateful for the influence which has done
so much to tame the savage Mongols, and to introduce hospitality
and humanity into the homes of Lassa and Siam. If Edwin Arnold,
a poet, idealizes him too highly, it is the better fault, and should
be easily forgiven. Hero-worshipers are becoming scarce in our time;
let us make the most of those we have.

Source: This article was originally published
in The North American Review, May, 1883, and reproduced in Nineteenth
Century Questions by James Freeman Clarke Boston and New York Houghton,
Mifflin and Company The Riverside Press, Cambridge 1897. Copyright,
1897, by Eliot C. Clarke. all rights reserved

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